


Even Angels Fall

by Kaydon



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Friendship, Gen, Growing Old Together, Slice of Life
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-24
Updated: 2019-09-24
Packaged: 2020-10-27 13:55:59
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,183
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20761451
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kaydon/pseuds/Kaydon
Summary: It has taken John a lifetime to see what Sherlock deduced over a fortune cookie and a vest of explosives all those years ago. A study of enduring friendship.





	Even Angels Fall

**Author's Note:**

> This was written after episode three, before series two aired, and posted on FFN until now. Please let me know what you think.

_ You will fly and you will crawl, God knows even angels fall. No such thing as you lost it all, God knows even fall. –Jessica Riddle _

_ 1\. You will fly _

By the end of the very first week you and Dr. John Watson have taken up residence at 221B Baker Street, you can see very clearly that something has always been missing from your life up until this point.

You know, of course, that there is something distinctly undesirable about your presence. Donovan's snide "Freak," at the sight of your face and your last flat mate's "_BLOODY HELL! IT'S TWO IN THE MORNING AND YOU'RE _AWFUL_ AT THE VIOLIN!_" followed by finding the check for his half of the contract termination fee on the table where his telly usually sat was observation enough to deduce that. But knowing something intellectually and actually _feeling_ it with the last few dregs of human emotion you cannot remove yourself from are entirely different. You only wish that this observation could be made with the same clinical disinterest that you view most things in life.

As it stands, the company of Dr. John Watson is not entirely unpleasant. When the injured Army Doctor (_Afghanistan or Iraq? _You wonder instantly) enters the laboratory and offers you his phone, you make no special effort to endear yourself to him. Instead, you walk out, offering your name, desired address and his life story in place of a parting wish. The stairs to the flat seem to trouble him, but the way he jumped at the chance for excitement and joked about Harry's true identity make you determined to reel him in as a flat mate.

When Dr. Watson (_no,_ you remember,_ John) _follows you on a mad dash during which you teach him both how to outrun a cab and about the merits of pickpocketing policeman, then puts a bullet through the heart of the man who might otherwise have talked you into suicide then laughs when you correctly deduce his fortune from studying his reaction as he cracks open the cookie and reads the paper inside, you can almost physically feel the missing something that you didn't know existed click into place. Insulting Lestrade and mocking Anderson and annoying Donovan may provide you with the same emotional high that came from solving a particularly good case, but you don't think you've been happy in this way since you were eight and Mycroft promised you that nothing would ever come between him and his little brother. You clinically note that this feeling is most probably what people mean when they claim that their hearts are soaring.

_ 2\. You will crawl _

As it happened, Mycroft left home shortly thereafter to attend a school that specialized in turning out aspiring politicians, and you made the conscious effort to delete the hurt from your mind like you delete outdated files from your computer, and your face relaxes into a mask of intellect and you forget emotion is real.

You always suspect that John will someday realize that you're a freak and he will follow Mycroft out the metaphorical door that leads off of the short-list of exactly two (_And a half, _your subconscious provides, _when you include Lestrade) _people that you have ever considered something more than acquaintances, though what exactly you aren't sure, because the mind of Sherlock Holmes has not been capable of having friends since Billy Copeland pushed you off the slide and into the Accident and Emergency Department when you were six.

You never suspect that the casual grimace on his lips as he walked out (_After you_ _criticize his writing, not after he comes home to find you shooting the wall with his handgun or the severed head where you were supposed to put the milk you didn't buy) _would sting quite like it did, or that you would stubbornly refuse medical attention when the flat's windows (_bloody hell the flat just exploded) _shattered, showering you in glass, because dammit, you have grown accustomed to having Dr. Watson care for you and his competency has eradicated the little trust you previously held for the remainder of the medical profession.

You aren't sure about the (_feelings? Is this what it means to feel emotion?)_ reactions you have when John hurries up the stairs calling your name, nor about the casually strained tone he forces himself to speak in when he enquires after your health in front of Mycroft and you realize that John's doctor persona was missing last night not because he didn't care but because he didn't know. You are able to categorize your reaction to the easy silence in the cab as relief.

Over the frantic rush to find the mysterious bomber, you aren't able to spare any of your mind's plethora of pathways to wonder about this reaction.

Until John, (_John Bloody Watson!),_ walks into the pool when you call for Moriarty. And then John opens his parka and suddenly you feel (_yes, Sherlock, these are feelings. Brilliant deduction that_) a mix of what you've come to recognize as relief and something that you deduce to be fear, possibly bordering on mind-numbing terror (_must remember to learn definitions of varying degrees of fear)._

After the pool and the paramedics and Lestrade's long queue of questions and Mycroft's longer queue of questions, you fall into the sofa and John disappears into the kitchen only to return a minute later with a cup of tea you currently find to be pleasantly strong, but that you might have turned down if your unclassified acquaintance _(friend?)_ hadn't just been held hostage because you were bored and looking for a good game.

John sits in the middle of the sofa next to you, instead of his usual chair or even the other end. "Yeah," he says quietly when your eyes study his _(breathing, thank you God he's alive) _body of their own free will.

_ 3\. God knows even angels fall _

Having admitted to yourself that John Watson was your only friend, the logical deduction that followed should read that it is difficult to let him think that you are dead for three grueling years, except that it's been almost six months since John _(Dr. Watson) _asked you to stand beside him at the alter on the day that he walks out of your flat _(your life)_ forever.

After the debacle _(John's words, not yours- you found it rather successful) _of John and Sarah's relationship, John keeps you and Mary as far away from each other as is humanly possible. He switches cabs, so that by the time you've caught up with one he's three cabs ahead. He calls for reservations to the nice French place on his mobile, then borrows Mrs. Hudson's or Lestrade's or the one from the left pocket of the man behind him in line when he buys more milk to make his real reservations, so you are never sure where to find them _(him)._

You only meet Mary the week after John announces his engagement and your mind begins to reclassify him as Dr. Watson in much the same way your older brother became your arch-nemesis. The moving truck pulls away from 221B and you fiddle with cufflinks on your suit to avoid noticing the tears in your eyes.

So when Mycroft offers to fake your death _(and pay your rent, so you can return to 221B when you are done) _so you can hunt the remainder of Moriarty's syndicate into the ground, it seems relatively easy to re-delete emotion from your mind and block Dr. Watson's anguished cries as he screams your name and searches for a body that he never finds.

_ 4\. No such thing as you lost it all _

When you finish the task Mycroft laid before you, you decide to be honest with yourself, and the nagging pain that has chipped away at the barrier between your subconscious and your conscious mind and admit that you may actually miss your John _(wait- _your _John?) _and return to Baker Street, where you are a little surprised to learn he has lived since his marriage ended.

John wakes slowly as you rub gently at the bruise that is forming where he hit you before he fainted, into your armchair _(John's, _you deduce, _has not been sat in for a least a year)._ When he becomes aware enough to do more than stutter fruitlessly and sip at your poor attempt for tea, you sit on the sofa and say, "Yeah," like it has become the customary answer to the resolution of any potentially deadly situation in which you find yourselves. And when the tea cup falls to the floor and the bitter liquid stains Mrs. Hudson's carpet _(and you wince because Mycroft is no longer paying your rent and Lestrade can't call you for a case on account of he still thinks you’re dead)_ and you find your arms suddenly full of sobbing army doctor, you think that maybe it has.

_ 5\. God knows even Angels fall _

You and John settle into a once-but-no-longer familiar routine of life, and it takes longer then you expect before you are bored enough to admit to Lestrade that you are _(still breathing, John's not crazy. Well, not that crazy. And would like a bloody case if you've got anything) _not dead, and the look on Anderson's face when he sees you walk in the door almost makes the three years you spent without John worth it. Almost.

It starts slowly, but you notice that John seems frustrated with the bustle of city life. On bad days, he loses whatever stealth he once possessed as every-other step is punctuated with the tap of a cane, injury induced arthritis makes his once psychosomatic limp real, and you have to accompany him to do the shopping because his left arm does nothing but hang uselessly at his side. On good days, he winces as he shrugs into his favorite jumper and the regards stairs as if they seem a daunting task.

Switching rooms so that John's is nearer to the ground floor eases the pain, but there are still eleven stairs between the landing and John's bedroom off the living room, and you buy him a nicer cane for his birthday that year, only to find you are moderately upset to see it every day. One day, you are delighted to see it propped up against his chair rather than in his hand as he limps about making tea, and the next day you began looking for a residence without any stairs, because the next day you come home and find John sobbing by the outside door and you have to carry him to the sofa. You put one of the rarely used kitchen chairs in the first floor landing and a threatening note demanding the chair stay there under the door of Timothy Hansen, who has been your landlord since Mrs. Hudson's death almost a decade ago.

You have been ready, though reluctant, to move since the seventh time you found John sheepishly sitting in the chair and helped him up the stairs, contemplating how eleven used to seem like such a small number, but now seems insurmountable.

It is Mycroft who eventually convinces you both to move, and though you say convinces the truth would be closer to forced, since that day you help John up the stairs and find the title deed to a nice, one-story cabin with a bit of land located on the outskirts of the suburbs sitting where it must be moved before John can sit and rest his leg and massage his stiff shoulder.

As you pack up the boxes of stuff _(Junk- how can one man own so much junk, John complains and you remind him that half of it is his, then you ignore him as he proves that no, possibly less than a quarter of it was originally his, but it doesn't matter so much anymore because he stopped remembering who owned what the hundredth time you stole his computer or his clothes or his book or whatever you were in the mood to be entertained by that day) _you realize that your life at 221B Baker Street has been more than satisfactory, and as you load the now thoroughly used chair into the moving truck and watch it pull away, and you are genuinely startled to realize that there are tears in your eyes.

A week later, you help John out of the cab and make for the _(your)_ house, but his hand on yours stops you, and you look at him. He says "It's been a good life, Sherlock," his graying hair looking particularly tousled, and you realize that what you deduced over a fortune cookie and a vest of explosives and a cup of bitter tea all those years ago, it has taken John a lifetime to see.

You almost reply "Yeah," but then you think that it may not adequately cover a lifetime of friendship with John. Instead, you choose reply with, "That, my dear John, is elementary."


End file.
